It is time to revisit elephants, I think, and where better to search for pictures than to go through my folders of the Addo Elephant National Park. Elephants are such photogenic creatures that I have endless images of them. In this post I will feature elephants drinking at various waterholes within the park. The first is of a lone elephant at the Peasland waterhole in 2015 – before it was decided to surround it with a rectangular seclusion barrier with electrified strands hanging down so that smaller species of animals would be able to drink without having to compete with elephants. This elephant swished the water around like this for a while before it actually began drinking.

These three elephants are also at Peasland in those early days. You can see that between them they have literally drunk the artificial waterhole dry! There’s not much room for any other animals…

My enjoyment of reading poetry aloud began a long time ago:

I was in Grade 2 when the small primary school I attended at Sheba Gold Mine, in the then Eastern Transvaal, hosted a concert. As was the custom, this took place on the small stage of the mine recreational hall. Apart from the weekly film show, opportunities for entertainment were so rare that most people in that mining community attended, even if they didn’t have children in the school. The details of the concert elude me for my concentration was solely focused on my contribution to the evening’s entertainment: I had been directed to recite a poem. All the poems we had learned at school were in Afrikaans; mine had to be in English.

I clearly recall paging through my mother’s embossed leather-bound volume entitled An Anthology of Modern Verse containing a collection of poems selected by A. Methuen…

(c)

Lad’s first letter home to his father and the rest of the family continues with Lad’s detailed training activities at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland, where he is part of an Ordnance Battalion.

Alfred Peabody Guion (Lad)

Wed.

Due to the issue of rifles last night, I did not have time to complete this letter. And it looks as though I may not have time to finish it tonight. We are to have a lecture at 8 PM and that is only a short time distant. If anyone tells you that we are busy, just let it pass as an understatement. Boy, from 5:45 until 9:00, with the exception of about 30 minutes at noon and 1½ hours in the evening, we do not have time to even think for ourselves. To say nothing of heeding “Mother Nature”.

May 23

I was right. I could not finish it, and then, since…